Owners of pets are always faced with the possibility of losing their animals. In an attempt to assure safe return of a lost pet, owners have placed their names, phone numbers and/or addresses on the pet tags worn by the pet, in hopes that the finder of the lost pet will contact the owner if the pet is found. If a pet is lost, this provides some direction and incentive to the finder of a pet to contact the rightful owner and safely return the animal.
Another method used by pet owners is through the use of computer microchips. The microchips may be programmed to contain identification information. One example of these microchip devices may be passive radio-frequency identification, hereafter RFID capsules. These RFID capsules have been provided to shelters, veterinarians, and pet hospitals in the form of miniature capsules that are injected into an animal via syringe and described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,025,550 assign to Trovan Limited. This works by injecting a fully assembled transponder that is encapsulated in the microchip into the animal's body. Millions of pets currently have the RFID transponder microchips injected into them using this method representing a socially acceptable method to help identify pets and their owners.
For identification to be retrieved from the microchip a person using a specific RFID reader has to be in very close proximity of the animal, typically holding the animal, to read a unique identifiable code that is wirelessly transmitted from the chip to the reader using the scanner as the power source to trigger and read the powerless passive RFID chip signal. The disadvantage of this process is it requires specific costly RFID microchip readers for different microchips since not all microchip readers read all microchips, and the scanner has to be within inches of the pet to be within range of the passive RFID in order to trigger a signal return.
In the event of a scared or injured lost animal, the animal may not allow anyone to approach or may attack the person concerned for the pet's well-being. Contacting local animal control and having them respond can take a significant amount of time, sometimes hours, which could be critical to the animal's wellbeing.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a system and method that overcomes the above. The system and method would allow individuals to identify a lost/stray animal from a safe distance and notifying the owner with details of when and where the animal was seen while remaining anonymous if desired.